What started out as a normal day on the job turned into a life or death experience for one Las Vegas cab driver. After driving a customer to his requested destination, the passenger acted like he was going to pay and asked the cab driver if he had change for a $50 bill.

22-year-old violinist Hahn-Bin Yoo spent this morning performing Chopin and Kreisler for investigators after they helped find a $500,000 violin he left in the back seat of a New York cab. Yoo had spent Sunday in the Hamptons and ended his night practicing on the borrowed violin at Lincoln Center. Afterwards he got into Dalbir Singh’s cab were he left the 19th century violin in the back seat.

“I was exhausted,” the South Korean native said. “I completely forgot about it.”

After dialing 311 he was, by chance, patched through to one of the cities top detectives Ming Li. Li contacted the Taxi and Limousine Commission and using their GPS tracking systems they were able to determine which cab Yoo had traveled in. Within minutes they were able to contact Dalbir Singh and retrieve the violin. When questioned about the violin Singh simply said “He is lucky, he was my last fare.” Yoo is actually the city’s second lost violin case in eight days. Gregor Kitzis told police about a pair of violins he accidentally left on the No. 1 train last Sunday. They have yet to be found.

While we have all had the experience of leaving something behind in a cab from time to time, it sounds like more people should be investing in a GPS tracker to attach onto their more valuable possessions, because you might not be so fortunate to recover your items the way Yoo did.